Degrees :
PhD, University of California, San Diego
MA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
BFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Biography / Academic Interests :
Cynthia Chris joined CSI’s Department of Media Culture in 2004. Her research interests include media history, the regulation of "decency" in film and television, gender and sexuality, media authorship, and animal studies. She has presented her work at international conferences sponsored by the Center for Twentieth Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, International Communication Association, Society for Cinema & Media Studies, Society for Science and Literature, American Studies Association, and Console-ing Passions: An International Conference on Television, Video, and Feminism. At CSI, Dr. Chris teaches undergraduate courses including Introduction to Media, Introduction to Communications, Media Industries, Media Analysis, Media & Culture, Media Regulation, Screen Comedy, and History of Radio & Television, as well as, at the graduate level, Media History and Cinema & Gender.

Scholarship / Publications :
Cynthia Chris is the author of Watching Wildlife, a critical history of nonfiction images of animals in film and television, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2006. Dr. Chris is also the co-editor of two edited volumes: Media Authorship (Routledge, 2013), with David A. Gerstner; and Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting (New York University Press, 2007), with Sarah Banet-Weiser and Anthony Freitas. She has published in the journals Camera Obscura, Television and New Media, The Communication Review, and Feminist Media Studies, and has authored numerous essays and reviews on film, performance, photography and video for Afterimage, Art Lies, exposure, High Performance, Springerin, and Texte zur Kunst, among others. As well, she has contributed to the online forums Flow and Antenna. In 2012, Dr. Chris contributed a chapter to the edited volume Animal Others: Animals and the Human Imagination (Columbia University Press). She also acted as co-editor and co-author of one of the first published works to address the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis on women, Women, AIDS, and Activism by the ACT UP/NY Women and AIDS Book Group (Boston: South End Press and Toronto: Between the Lines, 1990).
In 2014, Dr. Chris and Dr. Matt Brim, of CSI’s Department of English, were appointed to a three-year term as general co-editors of the journal WSQ, published by the Feminist Press at the CUNY Graduate Center. For more information, please see http://www.feministpress.org/wsq.